Bill Gates Inspirational Quotations

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.

We all need people who will give us feedback. That's how we improve.

It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

If you can't make it good, at least make it look good.

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.

This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50.

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.

If I'd had some set idea of a finish line, don't you think I would have crossed it years ago?

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

The difference between a stranger sending you a message that you might be interested in at a very low volume level, no repetition, just sending it to very few people, and that being done as spam - those things get close enough that you want to be careful never to filter out something that's legitimate.

I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.

People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn't they?

If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

I spend a lot of time reading.

The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Patience is a key element of success.

If you are born poor its not your mistake, But if you die poor its your mistake.

I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.

Our vision, which has not changed since the day the company was founded.

There were a lot of missteps in the early days, but because we got in early we got to make more mistakes than other people.

We weren't trying to just go public and get rich. There was no near-term thing. It always was this many-decades thing where there were no shortcuts and we'd sort of put one foot in front of the other.

If geek means you're willing to study things, and if you think science and engineering matter, I plead guilty. If your culture doesn't like geeks, you are in real trouble.

'I don't know' has become 'I don't know yet'.

Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping - they called it opportunity.

There are people who don't like capitalism, and people who don't like PCs. But there's no-one who likes the PC who doesn't like Microsoft.

The CEO's role in raising a company's corporate IQ is to establish an atmosphere that promotes knowledge sharing and collaboration.

We're responsible for the creation of the PC industry. The whole idea of compatible machines and lots of software, that's something we brought to computing. And so it's a responsibility for us to make sure that things like security don't get in the way of that dream.

I'm quite worried about the fiscal imbalances that we've got and what that might mean in terms of financial crisis ahead.

I try to make time for reading each night. In addition to the usual newspapers and magazines, I make it a priority to read at least one newsweekly from cover to cover. If I were to read what intrigues me- say, the science and business sections - then I would finish the magazine the same person I was when I started. So I read it all.

That way you can be certain to learn something you didn't know previously.

Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.

We're at the point now where the challenge isn't how to communicate effectively with e-mail; it's ensuring that you spend your time on the e-mail that matters most.

I studied every thing but never topped.... But today the toppers of the best universities are my employees

If you were born poor, it's not your fault. But if you die poor it is.

Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it's true.

We've got to put a lot of money into changing behavior.

To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.

Paul and I, we never thought that we would make much money out of the thing. We just loved writing software.